1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a multimedia information editing apparatus and a multimedia information reproducing apparatus that is capable of performing a piece of music and reproducing image information in response to the progression of that piece of music, a recording medium recording a multimedia information reproducing program, and a recording medium recording a sequence data structure for reproducing image information in response to the progression of a piece of music to be performed.
2. Description of Related Art
Technologies are known in which image information and music tone information are reproduced in synchronization to each other on a personal computer for example. One of these technologies is a software program by which a user-original digital photo album is edited based on photographs taken by the user by combining images, texts, and sounds. This software allows the user to combine images, texts, and sounds on a personal computer based on photographs taken by the user and to reproduce the combined results in a slide-show manner. This software also allows the user to attach desired background music to one or more of desired photographs. Further, this software allows the user to add visual effects such as wipe, fade-in, and fade-out when turning album pages, thereby imparting a kind of screen effects such as page turning.
However, the main purpose of the above-mentioned conventional technology is directed to the image reproduction, and therefore it cannot easily create sequence information determining image progression along the progression of music such as a video clip. Besides, the above-mentioned conventional software creates image progression information by arbitrarily arranging prepared display screen background images and screen effects (such as fade-in and fade-out) for use at connecting between successive scenes of photographs. Consequently, it is difficult for novice users to create the image progression information so that a series of photographs is combined to an effect flow smoothly. Moreover, the above-mentioned conventional technology requires, at editing the image progression information, to do tedious works such as replacement and deletion of each photograph or effect to be edited, thereby making the editing jobs burdensome.